Yes, this is a popular theory but there's no evidence in the fossil record.
Is there evidence in any direction? This really sounds like the most plausible hypothesis, to me at least.
With strange, custom-construction-requiring stuff like this, I tend to wonder how much of it would be explained by "help self/a buddy get rich". It's practically guaranteeing that there's going to be a single company supporting it for all time, which is a potentially-extremely-lucrative business deal.
If that's the case, obfuscating the reasons for these decisions is a rational move.
Huge supporter of rail but sadly I believe there are a number of mistakes being made. This is a classic example of how projects like this in the US need to be monolithic, self contained, and gold plated to the hilt. The correct action would have been for CA to incrementally acquire and build railways along a number of corridors. Take the SF bay for example. There should be one agency running Caltrain, the Capitol Cor…
Other successful high-speed rail systems (France's TGV, for example) also have dedicated rights-of-way, not shared with older equipment, and rail physically built to different standards (specially welded). You really don't want genuinely high-speed trains (300 km/h) running on the same tracks as anything slower, in normal operation. And if you try to build a high-speed system on earlier rights-of-way, you get somethi…
Correct. A difference is they start by thinking of (and running) the rail network as a whole system of supporting lines. Then add high speed railway segments to the network like expressways along key routes. This is what I think CA should do/have done. It's not too late actually, they could set up a "Caltrak". Develop a state wide rail plan that covered everything but urban metros, and begin buying assets/access and merging them into one whole network. What the CAHSR is building could continue, maybe with some adaptations of that plan, to just be those "expressway" sections mentioned.
NYC to Boston is 230 miles, about 3.5 hours by "fast" train. It's about an hour flight. A lot of people still take the train. If you can get the trains to take you directly into the city center, it can often be a better option.
I'm one of those people that go NYC to Boston and NYC to DC. I work in the dining car with laptop and WiFi. Only take planes when taking early AM flights to get to Boston or DC early in the morning.
And if you're coming from outside Boston to Manhattan Westwood station can be a lot easier than Logan airport.
I avoid flying like the plague but I'll do it if morning meeting and can't go down night before.
As I see it, the price of rail tickets will be pretty high.whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too?
In China, the high speed rail tickets are just about equally as expensive as flights. Though not having to go through Chinese airport security and flights are worth it. No mobile devices allowed at all during flights!
One advantage of rail is you can put a station in the middle of a metro area, removing travel time to the airport.
You can sometimes put an airport in the middle of a metro area as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_City_Airport London presently needs more runways and one of the serious proposals (now declined) was to build them in the Thames like the above.
Is there any reason Heathrow couldn't be moved out to the suburbs where expansion could take place to allow London to continue to be a worldwide travel hub, but then use high speed rail to connect with London proper?
Huge supporter of rail but sadly I believe there are a number of mistakes being made. This is a classic example of how projects like this in the US need to be monolithic, self contained, and gold plated to the hilt. The correct action would have been for CA to incrementally acquire and build railways along a number of corridors. Take the SF bay for example. There should be one agency running Caltrain, the Capitol Cor…
Other successful high-speed rail systems (France's TGV, for example) also have dedicated rights-of-way, not shared with older equipment, and rail physically built to different standards (specially welded). You really don't want genuinely high-speed trains (300 km/h) running on the same tracks as anything slower, in normal operation. And if you try to build a high-speed system on earlier rights-of-way, you get somethi…
I had to look this up when you said "specially welded"...
As far as I can tell, TGV tracks are built to vey tight tolerances, but Continuous Welded Rail (CWR) is a worldwide standard on new railway lines, nothing special. I most recently saw some thermite welding equipment just about to be used in Dublin (Ireland) during the laying of new tramway tracks. So there's nothing exotic about the welding process, though it is quite dramatic.
As I see it, the price of rail tickets will be pretty high.whats stopping the price of flights from being halved in the next couple of decades and killing this train service too?
My understanding and part of why I support the high speed rail project is this. Airports in California coastal cities are near max capacity. And expansion is either very expensive[1] or near impossible. And would face even more community objections than the high speed rail project. So the airlines likely wouldn't try to compete with high speed rail. Instead they would try to attract more national and international tr…
Even if the airports are near max capacity (and I think that's probably only LAX) there could be a lot more passenger-miles.
Right now most SFO-LAX flights are on nothing larger than a 737 or A320, and on LAX-SJC I seem to wind up on some abominable regional jet.
There's a lot of room to increase capacity by flying wide bodies if the demand exists. Compare to the SYD-MEL route, a similar distance, where you're likely to wind up on an A330 or 767.
Have you ever ridden a train in Europe or Japan? They are far and away the most comfortable way to travel any distance under 500 miles.
For short distances high-speed rail can be a good option, particularly in connecting neighboring cities (LA-SF, etc). The problems with all these projects are cost: Simple back of envelope calculations show it to be (a) dubious, or (b) possibly criminal (ie. standard taxpayer ripoff to cronies). $64B - do the quick math on that. Figure a 30 year return on investment earning 4% per year: $2.2B payback per year + opera…
It's less wasteful to spend $20 billion building a pointless wall on the Mexican border than the ~$40 billion in losses this rail is going to eat. I'm glad I'm not a California resident.
> a repeat of the BART mistake. Probably a different mistake but BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5". This means that every railcar, every everything, has to be custom made with no economies of scale. No one can remember why they did this.
> BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5". Interesting. When I saw this, I wondered if it was to match another standard gauge that was judged to be superior. But, looking at the list of rail gauges on wikipedia[0], 5'6" is the gauge for railways in India ("Indian broad gauge" to be specific). The initial BART rolling stock seems to have been build by Rohr, Inc.[1], which is based in California. So…